May 27, 2010

An aerial view shows the river Oder, near Ratzdorf, Germany, on Wednesday. German officials remained confident Thursday that reinforced dikes would hold as flooding of the Oder River along the border with Poland approached its peak. Flooding from southwestern Poland has been advancing downstream to the border region. Brandenburg state's interior minister, Rainer Speer, said flood defenses – already reinforced after flooding in 1997 – had been bolstered by thousands of sandbags.